Bank theft cash found in police club

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A detective believes the IRA is intent on making
Northern Ireland's police force appear stupid.

Northern Ireland police have found some of the £26.5
million ($A63.9 million) stolen two months ago from the Northern
Bank. It was in a Belfast police country club.

Police said £50,000 was left in restrooms at the weekend
in five packages and discovered after an anonymous phone tip-off to
the police complaints authority.

Police suspect whoever planted the money in the New Forge
country club did so "in an effort to distract the police from
investigating the Northern Bank robbery". The bank is owned by the
National Australia Bank.

In Belfast, a detective said the money was unlikely to produce
any leads in the hunt for the alleged Irish Republican Army gang
responsible for the December 20 robbery.

"This has all the hallmarks of the Provos (IRA) wanting to make
us look daft, and they have," he said.

In the Republic of Ireland, more than 100 detectives spent a
third day scouring piles of cash, financial records and computers
seized in raids nationwide against suspected IRA money
launderers.

The swoops netted about £2.5 million in cash, most of
which was found in the County Cork home of private banker Ted
Cunningham. He walked free from a Cork police station on Saturday
after two days of interrogation, but police said they were
preparing evidence against him to send to state prosecutors.

A Republic of Ireland detective involved in the swoops said on
Saturday night that police were close to confirming at least one
consignment of cash seized on Wednesday night came from the bank
raid.

He said most of the £60,000 found in a house in Cork were
newly printed banknotes bearing the Northern Bank's own design.

The robbery and police focus on IRA money-laundering have fuelled hostility to Sinn Fein."

They appeared to bear serial numbers that match those of stolen
notes, he said.

It is the first breakthrough for police since a gang took
hostage the families of two key Northern Bank employees and forced
them to clear out the bank's central vault.

Since the robbery, money-laundering authorities across Europe
have been keeping watch for any large transactions involving
British currency, particularly any bearing Northern Bank designs.
About two-thirds of the money stolen was new notes.

Investigators fear that some may already have been laundered in
Bulgaria and Libya. The detective said it would be harder to track
down money in those countries than in the European Union, where
money-laundering controls have been co-ordinated.

The robbery and police focus on IRA money-laundering have
fuelled hostility to Sinn Fein, the IRA-linked party whose leaders
held an emergency meeting in Dublin to discuss how to manage the
political fallout.

"We are facing a tornado of abuse from other parties, but we
will meet the challenge head-on," said Sinn Fein leader Gerry
Adams.

He noted that, although this week's police raids netted eight
arrests, only one was of a Sinn Fein official, and he was released
without charge on Friday.

So far, just one person has been charged. Don Bullman was
arraigned on Friday after police allegedly caught him handing over
more than ££50,000 - hidden in a detergent box - to two
men from Northern Ireland.

Police were still interrogating a Cork man in his 40s who was
arrested on Friday night while allegedly burning British pound
notes in his backyard.